V: The V in Valentine’s
By J.M. Snyder
The calendar might have said early February, but the city of Richmond, Virginia, was experiencing a mini-heat wave four days before Valentine’s Day. For city bus driver Vic Braunson, the warm weather was a pleasant respite—the snow that had fallen at the end of January was melted now, and dark rivulets of water gurgled into gutters along the city streets. There were still a few dingy piles of black snow pushed into the center of parking lots, left there by snow plows when the lots were cleared, and they probably wouldn’t melt before Easter. But the roads were clear and the ice was gone, and Vic’s long days behind the wheel didn’t end with tension headaches from the way he hunched his shoulders as he tried to navigate the lumbering bus through the wi
